RE: Mean Time Between Failure for the IBM AS400

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We don't have any downtime due to backup, most ptf's are now applied to a
hot system, we upgrade each time a new release becomes available.  We use a
high availability product to backup our libraries to our own hot site on the
opposite side of town, transaction by transaction.

With Save While Active you don't need much downtime for backup anyway, the
system doesn't require the system to be in a "restricted state throughout
the backup process."  There are times for a full save, but generally you
just need to backup security and configuration data and your application
databases.

With 10 casinos and 9 hotels on one 820 4 way we run 24 x 7 x 365.25.  We do
have application unavailability for upgrades of our applications, but it is
planned and of short duration.

-----Original Message-----
From: James Rich [mailto:james@eaerich.com]
Sent: Thursday, January 17, 2002 4:51 PM
To: midrange-l@midrange.com
Subject: Re: Mean Time Between Failure for the IBM AS400


On Thu, 17 Jan 2002, John Ross wrote:

> We have an IBM AS400 - 730 and 720. Luckily for us, our 2 systems have had
> 0 down time in many years.

This is probably not true.  Do you ever install PTFs or upgrades?  How
about backing up your system?  You do have down time.  You may not have
any failures per se but you do have down time.

It seems to me that compared to other stable systems (i.e. non-Microsoft)
OS/400 has more downtime due to backup/IPL.  That is probably due to the
database backup (which isn't necessary on my other systems since they
don't run the DB).  But OS/400 requires the system to be in a restricted
state throughout the backup process.  This can require a lot of downtime
every night.

Can anyone comment on:

1.  How to minimize downtime due to backup.  For example, how to get a
good "snapshot" of the data while minimizing the time spent in a
restricted state.

2.  How downtime due to system maintainance (daily backup, PTFs,
upgrades, etc.) compares between OS/400 and other stable OSes (like
Solaris, OS/390, other unix).  Does anyone run DBs on something besides
iSeries and can comment on their backup process?

Surely someone like the New York Stock Exchange has a lot of data to
backup every day and also can't allow their machine to be restricted for
very long.  How do they do it?

James Rich
james@eaerich.com

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